The State Duma will finalize a bill supporting the sale of goods of small agricultural enterprises
The question of where to sell the produced agricultural products is still a headache for farms. Relations with retail chains among small agricultural producers did not work out from the very beginning. Requirements for packaging and supply volumes, and even a considerable fee "per shelf" have become, in fact, a barrier for farm products.
At the same time, most consumers prefer goods “from the field” than imported goods delivered thousands of kilometers away. City fairs could become an alternative to chains, but it is not easy for farmers to get there either. “It’s a big problem for a farmer to trade at a weekend fair,” said Ramil Bulatov, chairman of the council of the Moscow Peasant Union, a farmerfrom Moscow region. - To get a free seat, you need to have time to submit an electronic application. Information about the start of filing such applications in the public domain is not found. As a result, in a matter of minutes, all places are dismantled. Therefore, at the "farmer" fairs behind the counter, you rarely meet a real farmer.
In addition, according to him, in order to trade on the site for two days, it is necessary to collect a lot of documents: a medical book, a certificate confirming the quality of the goods, etc. “You have to spend a lot of time on collecting papers, and not on the work itself. And I have no time,” notes Ramil Bulatov.
It is difficult to meet a farmer in the beautiful pavilions of the Moscow Fairs. Due to the high rent, the pavilions are half empty and today they are slowly starting to close, because it is much more profitable for the municipality to build a multi-storey shopping and office center on this site. Rosstat figures confirm this alarming trend - specialized agricultural markets have decreased by 42 percent over the past eight years, and collective farm cooperative markets by 52 percent.
“At a time when food inflation is on the rise, this situation is unacceptable. Small agricultural producers with their products should have direct access to the consumer,” said Sergei Mitin, First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Agrarian Food Policy and Environmental Management. In a conversation with Parliamentary Newspaper, he noted the importance of creating an infrastructure for the sale of farm products. The senator spoke about how exactly such infrastructure will be created using the example of a bill submitted to the State Duma in June with amendments to the law on the development of agriculture, the authors of which are members of both houses of parliament.
Sergei Mitin recalled that the law on the development of agriculture contains fifteen areas in which the state provides support to agricultural producers. "Into the billwe propose to add one more thing - subsidizing organizations involved in the marketing of agricultural products of small enterprises, ”the senator noted. Such organizations are understood as wholesale distribution centers that will carry out centralized purchases from agricultural producers, as well as its subsequent processing and marketing to retail outlets and public catering establishments.
Experts have already called such organizations agroaggregators. However, there is no novelty, except for the name. After all, it was precisely such functions that were assigned in Soviet times to agricultural and consumer cooperation. And this system successfully coped with its tasks. “In some regions, cooperatives in the form of associations of several farmers have survived today, but without state support their opportunities remain modest. But it is necessary to rent warehouses, purchase equipment for processing, and pay for logistics. Therefore, the involvement of state subsidies in this area will greatly simplify the sale of products for farms,” Sergey Mitin believes.
He also stressed that the bill also solves another important problem. It allows you to determine which productwill be considered a farm. These are agricultural products produced by micro- and small agricultural enterprises (the number of employees is up to one hundred people), as well as personal subsidiary farms registered as self-employed. “Personal subsidiary farms now practically cannot enter retail outlets (in the legislation, household plots products are listed only for personal use), so if the amendments are adopted, this will be a big step forward,” Sergey Mitin noted.
At the same time, the idea of creating a system of agroaggregators causes a wary reaction among the farming community. Vladimir Plotnikov, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Agrarian Committee, outlined their position to Parliamentary Newspaper. “So far, the concept of marketing organizations for farm products in the bill is rather vague,” he said. The essence of farmers' fears is that purely commercial structures can be created under the beautiful sign of agroaggregators, which in fact will not differ in any way from the already existing army of intermediaries, whose role in driving up prices for agricultural products is extremely negative. At the same time, their creation will be carried out with state support, and the money for this will be taken from the general federal tranche (it is issued to each region to support agricultural production).
“The emergence of a new intermediary will definitely not help the farmer and will not lower prices for the consumer. Therefore, it is necessary to stake on the development of rural cooperation, which is created on the basis of the association of farms. Such cooperatives have already been created in some places and successfully solve the problem of supplying products of small agricultural producers to trade. They are the ones who really need the state support envisaged in the bill today . And where there are no cooperatives yet, they need to be created,” Vladimir Plotnikov believes. He said that the draft law submitted to the State Duma would be finalized by autumn, taking into account comments from farmers in all regions.